How To Manage Membership Renewal:
Tips and tactics for small membership organizations
Introduction
If you are looking for ideas to refresh your membership renewal process, you’re not alone! Based on our online research, it appears that even large, national associations – such as ASAE (the Centre for Association Leadership) – admit they could do a better job of managing member renewal.
So here are some tips, ideas and insight into approaches you can take to promote effective membership renewal. But while it’s helpful to see how other organizations are managing their renewals, we recognize that you’ll need to tailor your renewal tactics to suit your members’ preferences; your renewal cycle and your available resources and technology.
Insight from our Membership Renewal Survey
Since this guide is partly based on insight gained through our Membership Renewal Survey, we thought we’d share some details on the profile of our survey respondents:
- First, it’s important to note that the respondents to our Membership Renewal Survey were predominantly membership organizations with 250 to 2000 members.
- The renewal cycle for respondents was
- 63.6% - static (or annual) renewal (all members renew on the same date)
- 36.4% - rolling renewal (members renew on their own anniversary date)
- 82% of respondents offered automated “self-service” renewal procedures
- Our survey respondents’ membership renewal process was managed by:
- Staff – 50%
- Volunteers – 37.5%
- Combination of Staff & Volunteers – 12.5%
*Please note:
you can check out the Membership Renewal Survey findings on the Wild Apricot Blog.